In the Vale of Tears

"To suffer and endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity, let men try as they may, no strength or artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it."
-- His Holiness Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum

The funny thing about that sentence is that it's either ludicrous, and reason to reject Rerum Novarum as just more medieval obscurantism, or obvious, and evidence that the Church and her teachings are for all times, ever ancient and ever new.